Video calls provide an excellent forum for meetings between participants who cannot travel to meet in one location. By capturing both audio and visual presentations of participants, video calls are often the next best thing to a personal meeting in one location. Advances in computer and networking technology have greatly reduced the expense of conducting video calls and maintaining a video network. Thus, complex video calls between a large number of participants have grown more common as a medium for conducting large scale business meetings.
Although video calls are an excellent alternative to in-person meetings, the scheduling, configuration and set-up of a video call is often a complex task that becomes increasingly complex as the number of participants in the video call increases. For instance, video calls involving three or more endpoints typically must be routed through a multi call unit (MCU) or several MCUs with each endpoint routed through an MCU port in order to coordinate presentation of the video call. As another example, if video endpoints use different protocols, then a gateway device is generally needed to establish and maintain communications between the endpoints. In addition, conventional video networks which involved hardware MCU and gateway assets are incorporating video over internet protocol technology so that MCU and gateway functions are also performed by servers routing TCP/IP packets.
Once a configuration for a complex video call between a large number of video endpoints is established, the hardware and software assets for supporting the video call typically are scheduled for the video call in advance and set aside so that others will not use the assets. For instance, technical staff that oversees the assets and the network bandwidth will make the video devices inaccessible to unauthorized users and will set aside bandwidth to support the video call, either through a local video network or through third party networks such as the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN), private networks or the Internet. This process of scheduling video devices tends to decrease the usefulness of video call networks since other ad hoc video meetings are more difficult to establish if assets are tied-up by scheduling in advance.
The complexity associated with configuring and setting up a video call have led to some hesitation by users for the wide spread adoption of video communications. Another related difficulty that has slowed the acceptance of video calls is that video devices are sometimes unreliable. The more complex the proposed video call, the more likely that a failure of a video device or the video network will disrupt the video call. For instance, if a video call is configured through three MCU devices, then the failure of a single MCU device may prevent the completion of the video call and the goal of the participants of the video call. As another example, failure of portions of a video network may result in reduction of available bandwidth so that the quality of a video conference is dramatically affected to the point of degradation of the purpose of the video call. In such instances, the participants of the video call generally must reschedule the call or find available assets to support reconfiguration of the call. However, even if assets are available to reconfigure the video call, a significant delay in the video call is typically introduced as the call is reestablished, often degrading the purpose of the call and the advantage of a video call over a personal meeting of regular audio telephone conference call.